Choosing the right ERP Consulting firm is critical to the success of your business. Unfortunately, not many organizations will take on the challenge of selecting and implementing the right ERP system.
An ERP Consultant is an integral part of your team who will help you identify and guide your business processes and help you learn which options will work best for your team and your unique business needs. When embarking on a digital transformation and selecting and implementing ERP software, it’s critical to find the right partner and the best ERP experts to help through the process. The criteria provided below should be used to identify the best experts and how to identify the most effective ERP consultants for the organization.
To ensure you are selecting the right ERP consultants and that you will get the most out of your software system, you should verify if the firm you are considering meets these five essential attributes.
Industry Experience
Look for a partner with extensive experience working with other companies in your industry and your company size. This “local knowledge” is invaluable for quickly setting up dashboards, reports, and KPIs that reflect the data tracked by companies in your industry. The ERP consultant’s industry knowledge also proves valuable in recommending best practices and streamlined workflows that they’ve seen work for similar companies. Also, this is helpful if your organization is subject to regulatory compliance.
Expertise and Vast Skillsets
The next thing to look at is how much experience this consulting partner or this expert team has with going through a transformation? Again, it’s easy to identify the resources that have experience with that specific technology being deployed.
It is critical to make sure that the expert consulting team has experience with these key terms:
- Organizational Change
- Business Process Improvement
- Data Migration
- System Architecture
- Program Management and Governance
- Risk Mitigation
An ERP Consultant should have the in-depth and wide-ranging product knowledge and present several options to you for consideration. They may have a product they favour, and some consultants may push one system onto all their clients. Make sure you ask for a range of recommendations to ensure they’re not driving a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
Please do your due diligence by asking for several references and talking to them to research the firm and the consultant’s reputation. By doing your homework upfront, you will set your project up for success, as the relationship you’ll build with your ERP consultant is critical to a successful ERP implementation.
Well Versed in Systems Integration
Consider that the consultancy you hire to integrate your company’s ERP system should have experience beyond the scope of only ERP. With technology as it is today, most companies look to integrate their front and back-office systems through APIs (external processes) or even more sophisticated blockchain technology. This is due to maximizing ROI and efficiency whilst making information immediate and taking transparency to a new level.
Ultimately, connecting CRM, e-commerce or other front and back-end instances with tighter ERP integration will result in multiple benefits for your company’s bottom line over the long term. Therefore, ERP system integration professionals who can handle your entire tech stack and become your partner for long-term success make far more sense than seeking multiple consultants for each project.
Advanced Software Customization Capabilities
You should also ensure that your ERP consultant can customize your new system to your company’s requirements. Accommodating your business to the ERP is not the ideal way to go, as by doing it that way, you will most likely not be able to make the most of its capabilities. So, your ERP consultant should have the in-depth and wide-ranging product knowledge and present several options to you for consideration.
Comprehensive, Ongoing Support
Quality comprehensive support that a company receives is a significant advantage of working with an ERP firm that is a value-added reseller instead of a software vendor. An ERP consultancy firm should be present from the beginning to the end, keeping lines of communication between everyone involved in a project, including bosses and colleagues, to ensure all needs are being met throughout the implementation process.
They should think of your installation outside of an IT point of view and aid businesses with adequate training and change management processes during the implementation stage and after the system goes live.
Be sure to ask if the ERP consultant provides ongoing support post-implementation to maintain and update your solution for maximum usability to ensure it performs for many years to come.
Conclusion
These points mentioned above are some of the most important things you need to consider when choosing an ERP Consultant. Not only by helping you select the right ERP consultant for your business needs but also help you find the right consultant who can drive your company forward in terms of growth and ensure its success.
BHC Group is a boutique management consulting firm helping businesses streamline and optimize their processes by implementing cloud solutions. We will help you identify the best ERP solution to fit your needs. Our highly skilled team of experts work together with organizations to achieve exceptional business improvements so that your company can focus on what you do best rather than on non-value-added activities.
Give us a shout to discuss how we can support your software and technology needs.
